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4. contact & info: a history lesson
Soul Survivor is a teenager! Like quite a few of you we're coming up to our 18th birthday, though we don't have to do A-Levels! Read on to find out how we got started, it's like a fun history lesson!
how mike got a job!
Soul Survivor grew out of an Anglican church, St Andrew’s Chorleywood, that was equipping Christians to move in the power of the Holy Spirit through the ‘New Wine’ family conferences.
The vicar of St Andrew's Chorleywood was, back then, a very nice and very wise chap called David Pytches. For some reason (which in hindsight he may regret) he unleashed a young(ish) Greek lad called Mike Pilavachi - a former accountant(!!!) - to help out with the church's youth work.
Fast forward 20 years or so and Soul Survivor is in its teens, getting passionate about seeing other teenagers living for Jesus and taking his love to their part of the world.
new wine & 1993...
Since the late 1980's New Wine has been running summer conferences to resource, equip and refresh the (Anglican - though not strictly) church, and it is at New Wine where the Soul Survivor story really begins.
It was clear from the growth in the youth work at New Wine that something separate was needed for young people, so in 1993 Soul Survivor launched its first annual five-day conference in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
This first event hosted just under 2,000 people and the number of delegates has grown every year. In 2008 around 28,000 people came along.
This now means there are a number of events held each summer to be able to accommodate everybody. Soul Survivor events are aimed at secondary school age and we have two of these in Somerset and one further north (in Stafford). Since 2004 we have also held a separate event for students and twenty-somethings called Momentum.
what else goes on?
We also keep ourselves busy the rest of the year with events such as Soul Sista one-day conferences (there are different ones for the Soul Survivor and Momentum age groups), a SoulNet youth leaders retreat and SoulNet regional day conferences.
around the world...
There are also six international Soul Survivor centres across the world that share our vision and values and hold annual events for the young people of Australia, Holland, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA.
That all sounds nice and straightforward but as you can imagine there have been a number of adventures and many interesting moments along the way where we’ve stepped out in faith, scared ourselves stupid and then seen God do wonderful things!
soul action
Of course the adventure doesn’t end there. With God continually sharing his heart with us for the last, the least and the lost of this world, we have set up a partnership with our friends at Tearfund called Soul Action. The aim is to provide practical opportunities for people to live lives of compassion that reflect the heart of the God we love and serve.
read more about soul action at www.soulaction.org...